Edinburgh-born Sir Donald Runnicles is, among other titles, the general music director of Deutsche Oper Berlin and conductor emeritus of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He has a lifelong passion for the music of Wagner and will be conducting Tannhäuser both at the Edinburgh Festival on 25 August with Deutsche Oper Berlin, and then at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in November and December.
My earliest musical memories are of singing as a choirboy in